Writing Objectives

Objectives tell what you are teaching. They tend to fall into one of three categories:

1. Cognitive
2. Affective
3. Psychomotor

Each of the domains has a specific focus and a variety of levels describing the sophistication or depth of learning and understanding. Levels progress from the bottom of the list to the top. Thus, in the cognitive domain the lowest level is knowledge while the top level is evaluation. A description of each domain follows.

Cognitive Domain: Intellectual skills and abilities

Affective Domain: Interests, attitudes, appreciations, and values

Psychomotor Domain: Motor skills

Writing an objective involves specifying four conditions:

• Behavior -- State the observable and terminal behavior “students” are expected to perform. State behavior in verb format.
• Content -- State the content area in which behavior is to occur.
• Conditions -- State the conditions under which the behavior is to occur.
• Criteria -- Tell the level of performance expected.

Given (condition) the student will be able to (observable and terminal behavior) (content area) with (criteria).

While on a field trip to the Oshkosh Public Museum, students will be able to write a list of ten industries that were important to Oshkosh in the 1800's and 1900's.

After attending the 6 week program “Free the Horses,” participants will be able to tell why they are valuable and lovable individuals to the group.

Writing objectives for the various levels in each domain is not extremely difficult. One can simply refer to one of the many lists of verbs for each domain and level. There are also many sites on the web that offer objective writing directions. Check out the following links for more information on writing objectives.

• Download a listing of verbs to my machine
• Mager's Tips on Instructional Objectives
• Kizlik's How to Write Behavioral Objectives
• Reference page for many sites on writing objectives